Auto Gate - Versi Pondok Indah

My friend Ina, has an automatic gate installed at her house in Taman Selasih Heights (actually, I added the word "Heights" to give it a more exclusive effect).

Ina is a hardworking career woman (over tak aku puji ko?). Her work demands a lot of hours daily. So, inevitably, she would reach home late at night (pepandai je aku buat cerite kan?).

Upon reaching the front gates of her home, she would simply need to click a remote device from her car and voila!!.. the gates would open.

Ina's PRT greets her at the front door and she then press a switch next to the door to shut the gates.

Now, allow me to illustrate the same process, but now, the main character is my neighbour in Pondok Indah.

The time is half past one in the morning. My neighbour's car whizzes past my house and stop right in front of his house gates.

Pooooonnnnn!!!! Pooooon!!!!!Pooooon!!!!!

A few seconds of silence.

Hoooonkk!!!! Hoooonkk!!!!!!Hooonkkkk!!!!!Hooooonkkkk!!!!

Out comes a red and puffy eyed PRT, with hair which resembles a lion's mane, in a oversized t-shirt and a sarong. She runs in tiny little steps to the gates with a bunch of keys in her hand. She then squint her sleepy eyes trying to insert the keys into the padlock.

Gates open, the car drives up the porch. The rear door swings open and my neighbour walks straight into the house through the main door. The driver then shut the gates while the poor PRT finds herway back to her room through the door near the end of the porch, hoping that her disrupted dream would pick up where it had left.

That is Pondok Indah's version of an automatic gate. The process starts with a neighbour (that's me) awaking honk.

Regardless of the time of the day, the process remains the same.

Which leaves me with a few mind boggling (ok, a bit of exxageration here) questions :

• Why can't the driver open the gates? Is it because opening gates is not in his job specs?
• Why can't my neighbour or his driver call the PRT to open the gates instead of waking up the poor neighbour (again, that's me) by honking in the wee hours? Panggilan dari Esia ke Esia murah loh!!
• Why can't my neighbour (who BTW could afford owning fancy cars and a big house in Pondok Indah) simply install an automatic gate? Kan bisa pamer ke tetangga yang lain..
• When was the last time my neighbour had physical contact with the iron gates of his own home?

The frequent incident as illustrated above led my curiousity to inspect the gates of other houses in the vicinity. On the pretext of a Sunday morning jog (it was actually more of a brisk walking), I went past from one house to another. And what a remarkable finding I got at the end of a 15 minute (ok, I was feeling a bit lazy that morning) brisk walking. None has an automatic gate!!

So, my short and sweet conclusions are - either the house owners in Pondok Indah do not know the existence of an auto-gate or they are simply kedekut nak mampus.

Somehow, I'm more inclined to the latter.